Things to come … Self-healing PCBs
First published in Management Today, March 2003A dead PC is as often caused by a cracked printed circuit board – but not for much longer, if Fred Wudl has his way. The director of the Exotic Materials Institute at the University of California in Los Angeles has developed plastic that can heal itself.
In the Diels-Alder reaction, two organic molecules bond to form long polymer chains. The bonds between the chains combine to make a solid with the mechanical strength of epoxy resin. If any of these breaks – say, when a crack forms – they can be rebonded by heating the material. Wudl has found a chemical mix where bonds form at 120 deg C.
PCBs made of Wudl’s strong, transparent plastic wouldn’t crack – the constant heating and cooling ensures that no sooner does a fissure form than it’s fixed.
@jameswoudhuysen I use my bicycle every day. Exercise and access to shopping without any parking meters and all that fuzz. But alfa-cyclists are the worst. They are competing at 40 mph and always acting rudely to get where they are going.
A PRO-CAR CYCLIST WRITES: 12-1pm tomorrow on #R4, will be talking bikes, cars, pedestrians, public transport – and #JeremyVine
Stimulating piece on the #CrisisOfCustomerService by clever @ClaerB @FT.
All that Clinton-era #CustomerExperience guff was always for the birds - certainly compared with, er, price.
The new thang? Often there is NO service - and thus no #CX!
Innovators I like
Robert Furchgott – discovered that nitric oxide transmits signals within the human body
Barry Marshall – showed that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most peptic ulcers, reversing decades of medical doctrine holding that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid
N Joseph Woodland – co-inventor of the barcode
Jocelyn Bell Burnell – she discovered the first radio pulsars
John Tyndall – the man who worked out why the sky was blue
Rosalind Franklin co-discovered the structure of DNA, with Crick and Watson
Rosalyn Sussman Yallow – development of radioimmunoassay (RIA), a method of quantifying minute amounts of biological substances in the body
Jonas Salk – discovery and development of the first successful polio vaccine
John Waterlow – discovered that lack of body potassium causes altitude sickness. First experiment: on himself
Werner Forssmann – the first man to insert a catheter into a human heart: his own
Bruce Bayer – scientist with Kodak whose invention of a colour filter array enabled digital imaging sensors to capture colour
Yuri Gagarin – first man in space. My piece of fandom: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/10421
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield – inventor, with Robert Ledley, of the CAT scanner
Martin Cooper – inventor of the mobile phone
George Devol – 'father of robotics’ who helped to revolutionise carmaking
Thomas Tuohy – Windscale manager who doused the flames of the 1957 fire
Eugene Polley – TV remote controls
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